Paula Pirnstill Safety Fair set for next weekend in Farwell

The ninth annual Paula Pirnstill Memorial Health and Safety Fair is coming back to Farwell next weekend.

This year’s even will be held Saturday, April 20 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the Farwell Schools campus, founder Tom Pernstill said.

The event was started in 2004 by Tom and his wife Paula, who was battling ovarian cancer at the time. She attended the first Health and Safety Fair but was too ill to attend the second, he said. She died July 5, 2006.

“Before we started it, I was doing seminars for the chamber,” Tom said in an earlier interview. “We both wanted to do more for people so we contacted Larry Barco at MidMichigan Medical Center in Clare, Dave Peterson at the school and started calling everybody in the yellow pages that had anything to do with health, and God took over.”

“That first year we filled the old gym and moved into the hallways. Now we fill up both the new and old gyms and the Jaime Center,” Pirnstill said.

Every year the event, which will feature more than 90 venders this year all geared towards building a healthier community, gets bigger and better. Everything at the event is free. “Plan to bring your friends and neighbors,” Pernstill said.

“New this year, we will have the Lions ‘Hearing Lab’ for the kids.

‘Get into the Groove’ is the theme this year for the Kid’s Gym,” Tom added. “Bring your children to participate in the many activities that will be available.”

He added, “As in past years, free Cholesterol blood tests will be available as well as several other tests. A free healthy lunch will be provided to all attendees. The smoke house will be back to educate both adults and children how to get out of a burning building. Plans also include the helicopter from LifeNet of Saginaw to land in the parking lot around 9:45AM.”

If you are a health provider and would like to be represented at the Fair, there is still room. Call Farwell Area Chamber at 588-0580 for more information.

“The whole idea of the Health and Safety Fair is to get information to people who otherwise may not have access to it,” said Pirnstill.